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Doctor Who (2003)
"Time is of the Essence" Doctor Who (2003) or Doctor Who: The Movie, was a Science Fiction Adventure film and the first film in the Doctor Who: Motion Picture franchise. It was produced by Paramount Pictures and BBC Films and was released first in America on 21st November 2003 and then in the UK and everywhere else on 23rd November. The film was produced to celebrate Doctor Who's 40th Anniversary and is the final story for Richard E Grant's Tenth Doctor as well as for Anna Hope as Commander Sandra Armstrong. Synopsis The Doctor and Commander Sandra Armstrong are brought to Gallifrey by the Keeper who requests their help in repairing the Time Distortions which threaten the entire web of time, caused by Rassilon. The Doctor summons his previous incarnations to help repair the time distortions. While his predecessors deal with the unfolding chaos, the Doctor and Sandra travel back in time and end up involved in Omega's dangerous time travel experiments. Plot So we start the film with a rather exciting sequence which would go something like this: The TARDIS flies by the camera and flies straight into a vortex that has opened up in space. The camera follows the TARDIS in through the vortex and then the camera flies straight into the TARDIS through it’s keyhole into a gigantic console room. The Tenth Doctor and Sandra are standing by the console. Suddenly the TARDIS grounds to a halt, the time rotor stops moving and all the lights go dark. Cut to outside and we see a blue beam pulls the TARDIS out of the vortex. We follow it as it’s pulled into normal space and we see this gigantic orange planet, Gallifrey. The beam then pulls the TARDIS closer to the surface. Cut back inside and Sandra asks the Doctor what’s going on. He explains that it feels like a type 70 time beam from Gallifrey. He tells her then that the Keeper will be wishing to see them both. Cut back outside and in one shot the TARDIS is pulled right through onto the planet as we see it flying towards the citadel. A small hatch opens up in the glass dome and the TARDIS is pulled through that before it’s pulled right down to the bottom of the citadel where a small hatch opens and the TARDIS is pulled through that into a giant hanger decorated with the Seal of Rassilon. The proceeding scenes see the Doctor and Sandra speaking to the Keeper, who is now in charge of Gallifrey. He explains about the distortions in time and then summons the Doctors previous incarnations their as well however because of the distortions, the Doctor’s first three incarnations have been erased from history and pretty soon the same will happen to the other Doctors. The Keeper explains that he has pinpointed the main distortion points and each incarnation must go back to one of these points and rectify them. After they have all left, the Keeper walks out of the hanger and into a small closed off room. Sitting on the throne there is the Rani. He tells her that she must find the Rogue to stop this once and for all. Cut to a dark science laboratory that looks as if it’s falling apart. The door swings open and Omega walks in. He walks over to his equipment and sits down as he buries his head in his work. Suddenly a gust of winds flows past his face and he looks up and then walks to the door and closes it. But another gust of wind flows past his face. He looks confused and then there’s another and another until its a constant. Then he hears a noise, it sounds like an engine. He looks up and a big blue box fades into existent. Omega looks amazed as the box becomes solid. He walks around it until he gets to the door. He’s about to open it when it opens as the Doctor, the Rani and Sandra walks out. The Doctor turns to Omega and says ‘Sorry did I startle you? You must be Omega!’ We then follow the Doctor and Sandra’s attempts at ensuring that Omega goes ahead with his time travel experiment and they help him out. This plot-line goes throughout the film until about 20 minutes until the end when the experiment is conducted and Omega starts to be engulfed by anti-matter and he vanishes. This is of course all intercut with other plot-lines that the film follows. One of them however, invades this plot-line. About half way through, Omega is attacked by a squadron of Cybermen who are only to be defeated by UNIT. The Doctor explains that the time distortions are indeed getting much worse. Another plot we follow is with Leftover and the 8th Doctor. This plot sees people from many different time-periods breaking through into modern day Newcastle and the 8th Doctor, Bernice, Henrick and Leftover finally repairing that distortion only after the 8th Doctor has a sword fight with a medieval knight. We then follow similar different plots with the rest of the Doctors. For the 4th Doctor, he and Romana end up on an intergalactic hub planet and spend their time tracking down a crime lord who has been selling time to different people. In the end the Doctor seizes his operations and ends up closing the time distortions he caused there. For the 5th Doctor we follow him in an alien religious order who have been worshipping a Dalek who has fallen through time to them. He of course ends the Dalek’s plans and sends it back where it came from. For the 6th Doctor, we follow him and Peri on a prison planet where they discover that the prisoner’s minds have been wired into a computer interface. They discover that both the Rogue and the Rani are behind this as they have already ‘fixed’ the distortion and have done this through using the prisoner’s brains. The Doctor explains that the distortion is still here and they have caused it. So he then proceeds to out-smart them both which allows him to release the prisoners. The 7th Doctor finds his distortion of Gallifrey’s neighbouring planet of Karn. He is greeted by the sisterhood who are in deep meditation, trying to find the source of the distortion themselves. The Doctor and Ace explore the outskirts of the Sisterhood’s temple where they find a crashed ship with a body in, the body of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The Doctor tries to revive him but fails. The Brigadier is dead on Karn and there is nothing the Doctor can do about it. But before he can do much mourning a creature appears out from behind the ship and pounces on the Doctor and Ace, they managed to break free killing the creature but before it reaches it’s point of death both it and the Brigadier fade into thin air. Our final plot-line we follow is with the 9th Doctor and Grace on the Planet Skaro. Straight after landing, they are taken prisoner by the Daleks and taken to the Emperor, however this Emperor is different; he seems to be telepathic as he invades the Doctor’s mind and exposes his worst fears. However the 9th Doctor uses that to his advantage and starts looking into the Emperor’s mind. He starts reversing all the damage that has been done through the combined minds of both a time lord and a Dalek and causes the Emperor to fade out of existence. The Dalek’s reach to attack the Doctor but a snap of electricity takes them both and they appear once more in the hangar from the beginning of the film. All the other Doctor’s are also there except for our Doctor, the 10th. We cut back to Omega’s Laboratory after the time-travel experiment. The Keeper appears before the Doctor and tells him there is one thing more that he must do. He explains that although the timeline has been rectified, it must all be tied together. He tells the Doctor that he must return to Gallifrey with him and use the Sufricq device. The Doctor tells him that it’s forbidden and refuses to use it but the Keeper grabs onto him and Sandra and with a burst of electricity they move to the throne room on Gallifrey which now holds the Sufricq device in the middle. The moves the Doctor over to it and tells him that he must use it for Gallifrey. The Doctor refuses but the Keeper forces him onto the device and the Doctor screams in agony. We flash through all of time in a montage and see it appearing and disappearing over and over again. We cut back to the throne room and we see the Doctor lying on the floor with the Keeper, the Rani and the Rogue looking over him. The Keeper states ‘You have done it.’ Then a yellow glow covers the Doctor’s face and then his whole body. His faces bursts out in an explosion of individual particles which stretch around the room and then come back together to form the face of the 11th Doctor, Anthony Head. Cut back to the hanger. The Keeper and Sandra enter. The Keeper tells the rest of the Doctor’s that they have done it and that he thanks them deeply and the only way to repay them is to make their latest incarnation the 11th Doctor Lord President of Gallifrey. The 4th Doctor walks up to the Keeper and states that they don’t want that. It’s a duty they do not desire but the Keeper clicks his fingers and they all disappear back to their own TARDISes in their own times. He remains with Sandra who tells him that he’s a monster. He replies with: ‘I’m fixing the Universe’. They walk back into the throne room where he tells the Doctor that this is now his and he is Lord President of Gallifrey. The Doctor tells him ‘NO!’ but the Keeper tells him that as of now he is sworn to never leave Gallifrey and if he did he would be erased from history with the Sufricq device. He tells the Doctor that he will work closely with his deputy, the Rogue, and the Leader of the Opposition, The Rani, to ensure the safety of Gallifrey for ever more. Sandra repeats her line that he is a monster but the Keeper once again tells her that ‘I’m fixing the Universe’. He then tells the Doctor to say goodbye to Sandra as she will be return shortly. Sandra asks what he means but the Doctor just says: ‘I’m so sorry’. Sandra then vanishes with the burst of electricity and appears in Exotract 42, her space station that the Doctor rescued her from. The one that was burning up and about to explode. Sandra gasps and then we cut back to the throne room where the Doctor just looks at the Keeper with distaste and says ‘Was that really necessary?’. The Keeper just says ‘You are Lord President of Gallifrey, you can’t have any distractions’. And with that the camera pulls away out of the hanger doors out of the citadel out of Gallifrey into Space where the end credits begin. Cast * The Doctor - Richard E. Grant * The Doctor - Paul McGann * The Doctor - Richard Griffiths * The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy * The Doctor - Colin Baker * The Doctor - Peter Davison * The Doctor - Tom Baker * The Keeper - Don Warrington * The Rogue - Derek Jacobi * The Rani - Kate O'Mara * Omega - Patrick Stewart * Commander Sandra Armstrong - Anna Hope * Janet Wells - Rakie Ayola * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman * Ace McShane - Sophie Aldred * Melanie Bush - Bonnie Langford * Nyssa - Sarah Sutton * Romana - Mary Tamm * Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney * Captain Mike Yates - Richard Franklin * Sergeant John Benton - John Levene * Ian Chesterton - William Russell * Susan Campbell - Carole Ann Ford * Katie Tollinger - Julia Sawalha * Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen * Jo Jones - Katy Manning * Doctor Elizabeth Shaw - Caroline John * Voice of K-9 - John Leeson * Voice of the Daleks - Nicholas Briggs * Michael - Robert Eggworth * Dasyt'op - Fredrick Boulevard * Francis - Christopher Biggins * Timelord #1 - Patrick Alexander * Timelord #2 - Graham Samuels * The Doctor - Anthony Head (uncredited) Crew Memorable Quotes To be added. Background Information To be added. Development To be added. Pre-Production To be added. Production To be added. Post-Production To be added. Reaction * ''Doctor Who ''premiered in cinemas on 21 November 2003, number one at the box office. With a budget of around US$120,000,000, it opened on 3,337 screens and went on to garner US$173,398,518 domestically. This gave the film a gross margin of 30.8%, a markup of 44.5% and a gross profit of US$53,398,518. Story Notes * This is the final story to feature the Tenth Doctor. * This is also the last story to feature Sandra Armstrong until The Confrontation Of The Wicked. * This is the first story to feature Bessie since Battlefield in Season 26. * This also marks the first and, so far, only time that a Doctor has met a villain who he wouldn't properly meet until a future incarnation, in this case the Sixth Doctor meeting the Rogue. * This is the first story to feature an Emperor Dalek since The Evil Of The Daleks in Season 4. * The Fifth Doctor's subplot is based on an unproduced story named 'The Elite' that was proposed for Season 20. ** In the original unmade TV version of this plot the Fifth Doctor would have made Animal Baloons, in the subplot he goes around sharing Chocolate. * A new arrangement of the Theme Tune composed by Murray Gold was used for the movie for both the opening and closing credits. * Even though future movies would use different theme tunes, the theme used for this film was used on the first part of the closing credits for Doctor Who: Revelation and Doctor Who: Vengeance as well as the end credits of Seasons 41 and 42. * The 2003 re-release of the Elton John song Rocket Man was used for the end credits and features in the scene where Omega launches Pathfinder. * This film began a tradition of the Doctor regenerating in each new film, this was done by Paramount to keep continuity between the films so that they would be easily accessible for non-fans. Continuity * The Keeper has been acting as Lord President since the failed Destruction of Gallifrey by a resurrected Rassilon. * When Rassilon was killed it caused severe time distortions to occur all throughout time and space. * The Tenth Doctor and Sandra had previously met Omega during the creation of Pathfinder. * The Third Doctor had intended to take Sarah Jane Smith on a visit to Florena. * Tegan refers to her possession by the Mara and her subsequent attempt to kill the Fifth Doctor. Awards and Honours Promotion TV Spots During the lead up to the film, a 60 second TV spot was broadcasted on both the BBC Channels and UPN. Home Video Releases * Category:Movies Category:Tenth Doctor stories Category:Seventh Doctor stories Category:Eighth Doctor stories Category:Ninth Doctor stories Category:Sixth Doctor stories Category:Fifth Doctor stories Category:Fourth Doctor stories Category:Multi-Doctor stories Category:Regeneration Stories Category:Dalek stories Category:Cyberman stories Category:Ice Warrior Stories Category:Anniversary Stories Category:Companion Introduction Stories Category:Companion Departure Stories Category:Stories Category:Leftover stories Category:Stories Set On Gallifrey Category:Omega Stories Category:Stories Set On Earth Category:Chapter Two Part III Stories